Create a Seamless Texture Repeat

How to create a seamless texture repeat in Procreate

To be honest, I mostly do this in Photoshop as it has better tools for creating a perfect textured repeat.  You can see my Photoshop method in my blog post here –  Photoshop Tutorial: Create a Repeating Texture.  But for this blog post, I’m going to show that it is entirely possible in Procreate.

So why do we need to create a repeating texture? 

Well, for me, I often have a nice textured background in my pattern designs and in order to end up with a nice repeating pattern, the texture needs to repeat much like the motifs.  This can be tricky, as backgrounds are not isolated motifs that can be easily repeated.

To create a seamless texture repeat, you first need to ensure your canvas size is the size of your repeat pattern if that is what you’ll be using it for.  This could be a textured photograph, painting, or marks.  For this example, I use a painted textured background that I created in Procreate.

To create the Repeat…

1. Duplicate the texture layer, so you have five duplicates.
2. Turn off the 1st layer (this is just a backup in case we have to start again)
3. Ensure Snapping is turned on, then move each of the remaining four layers to the four quadrants.
4. Merge the four layers
5. Use the clone tool to remove the vertical and horizontal seams.
6. Test it out by creating an additional four duplicates and reduce/scale down them to the four quadrants (ensure snapping is turned on).  There should be no obvious seams, and you’ve kept your original layer from step 5.
7. You can now arrange your motifs on top of the layer from step 5.